By Timothy Le
School in the terms of a student can be defined as a place full of challenges and growth . One of our many complaints usually are directed towards the difficulties of classes within the school. In our perspective teachers play a major influence into why we struggle so much with our classes. This applies to most of us but what if I were to reframe that thinking? The teachers of this school are hired for a reason, their motives are to see us succeed, and every teacher has a different philosophy that we have to focus on to succeed. I’m not speaking as someone who has the best grades in the school, the smartest kid in this school but I’m an average student who wants to learn like everyone else.
One of the most challenging subjects that I struggle to get through is English, and it’s not because I can’t read, write, or speak but because I’m not changing the way I read, write, or think. The teacher who was able to teach me these was Mrs. Sexton. Now I hear from a lot of students about the difficulties of this class. I was a part of that crowd for a while until I realized that I started improving in one of the toughest classes in this school. Was it hard work that got me better grades? Was it maybe starting to tune into class for once in a while? Was it better note taking? Sure, those things were necessary for a better result, yet it was the overall motive that I had to buy into. In the English classes of this school, the common assignments that we all hate doing are annotations, analyzing text and pointing out significant details that we see. In my English class, annotations were strict but gave me a new view when reading literature works. Sure it’s very time consuming but once you change the way you read and annotate, time flies very quickly. Being able to open my mind to the different references and styles that the author incorporates into their work, makes reading faster, easier, and more enjoyable. I started to realize that the reason why most students had struggled, especially in that class, wasn't because they didn't qualify to be in that class. It was because we aren’t adapting and adopting the new perspective our teacher is giving us. Anyone can take good notes, anyone can have great annotations, anyone can be an excellent writer but that’s not what learning is about. Learning in Mrs. Sexton class shows that in order to be a successful student in her class I needed to tackle new ideas in order to improve, whether it was 15 questions regarding the different thematic ideas presented in Frankenstein, to tear apart our own essays, or in general to start focusing on professor connections. I was given a new perspective on not just English but my classes. The literature that we studied didn’t only define a class but it defined what was needed to pass in that class. The teacher lays the groundwork: simple presentation topics, worksheets, daily annotations. We take those assignments as if it defined our grades, the main subject that was presented is how deep can you go? How can you expand on the simplest ideas and make them into concepts that help you improve?
I have an English Tutor for SAT prep and during one of my tutoring sessions she asked for an essay that I had written. The only thing that I had was my essay for my winter final, sure enough I presented it to my tutor and the feedback had shocked me. When writing my essay about Lord of the Flies we were given random topics, mine was how did memory play a part within the captivity of the boys? The unusual theme of memory had not been stated within Lord of the Flies or so I thought, my teacher didn’t care whether I could define a specific part of the book that showed memory, but it was the actions and themes within Lord of the Flies that depended on memory. If you were to ask freshmen year me that same question, I would have googled the whole essay but because my teacher was so focused on trying to get me to answer a theme that wasn’t in the book is when you know you reached a higher point in education. Back to my tutor’s feedback and I was given these words “How amazing can that essay get?” Now I’m not a writer but what caught my tutor’s attention was the question being presented “Importance of Memory”. That’s when I knew that to unlock my new point of view I have to ask the hardest concepts when it comes to literature and adapt to new styles of reading. Responding to a teacher’s vague question can make the brain come up with creative answers, responding to yourself makes the brain focus on your ideals.
This Blog isn’t about how I dealt with my struggles in English but to mainly explain the different concepts you have to take in order to pass in school. We have to understand that the hardest classes come with the hardest concepts to understand but that’s why a class can tend to be so hard. Not a lot of people know but math is almost identical to English, sure addition and subtraction isn’t in English and vice versa. Is the process of learning new subjects the same? Yes, we have to understand that teachers give you a chance of improving and to think differently. A student gets the chance to learn new things because you mastered what you needed to know to improve. Now the real question is whether you are willing to expand on what you already know, it can be a simple chemical equation yet it provides new ways of living, a new equation unlocks different solutions to a question. My LA teacher was able to teach me all of that not because she told me I needed to change, but because the way she presented her concepts towards the class was able to convince me that I had to embrace a new style of learning to improve.
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